Inventing and Innovation

There are those who believe our nation is crumbling and declining. I feel their frustration and pain but don’t conclude as they do. To be plain, our nation is not crumbling nor declining.

Rather, it is changing.

It is changing from what has been to something entirely new. The new is not yet clear or well defined. It will become clearer as time moves along. It will take our concentration to participate in this change so that the future is as promising as the past has been.

All change is uncomfortable. The beauty of change, however, is that it teaches us what we are capable of doing. Here are some of our capabilities:

• Recognizing change is taking place; something is fading away and something new is taking its place, not just an event or happenstance thing
• Identifying what is changing from all the other ‘noise’ of life surrounding the change
• Determining the trajectory of the change; where is it going? What is it affected by and effecting all at the same time? Is this powerful enough to be self-sustaining?
• Dealing with the consequences of change; how do we preserve values and quality of life for those adversely affected by the change? How do we locate the benefits of the new changes to train adopters and amend services to care for those affected by the fallout of change?
• Inventing our way to a new future so it is positive not negative 

Taken together all of these things make change palatable and manageable. It is the story of history as old as mankind. We note change and adapt to it or defend against it. Most defenses are futile. Harnessing the power of the change is usually the best tactic but that means adoption and refining the change.

Rather than anger, frustration and violent protests, we best put our thoughts and creativity to the task. Here are some topics we need to deal with:

1. Education delivery and accessibility is not good. We need to recognize this first, then commit to do something about it. Yes, public education of high quality is costly but well worth the investment in our people. After all, these people are our families, kids, and close friends. If they are doing well in life we all are doing well. If any are doing poorly, we all suffer. It is also wasteful of human life. So invest in education. 

Educational processes and products need to be reinvented to be improved. Let us do this first and then replace the old delivery and access mechanisms. The new will produce vastly better results for vastly reduced costs compared with the old system.

2. Immigration policy and procedure: ours is a nation of immigrants. It is at the core of our identity and history. Rather than avoiding it, welcome it. If our nation is the preferred nation to which immigrants choose, then we have won the lottery of life! Yes there will be consequential management issues to be handled. So let’s do this. Not to do so is a decision to change our identity to a nation not valuing immigrants and their contributions to the richness of our combined heritage. I don’t think that is what America believes. So let’s make the decision to work on fixing the immigration system. 

3. Gun Violence: the 2^nd Amendment has been misread for generations. The consequence is one gun for every person alive in America today. That’s too many guns. I don’t know what the right number should be, but 330 million guns is not the magic number. Nor how we control gun use, training, registration, ownership, liability issues, and all the rest. The 2^nd Amendment allows arming citizens so a well regulated militia is the result. We have accommodated guns for sports and personal protection in wildlife areas. But a modern society requires police, national guard and military units to protect the life and liberty of all of us. They are the persons with the keeping the peace role, not each citizen. We can address gun violence and save lives. We have no choice but to do this. 

4. International Peace and Prosperity: our number one goal after defending our own borders (the reason we have a military in the first place) is to work for and ensure world peace. Period. That’s it. Combining all nations to work together for this end goal is vital for our long-term survival. Working together we build better lives for everyone and thus reduce the tensions that create distrust and violence in the first place. 

International Trade and Commerce: this is not a separate issue. It is the same as International Peace and Prosperity. Why? Because international trade and commerce is the tool that brings prosperity. And prosperity brings peace. It is that simple. Dealing with it all in all of the global cultures is complex. But the end goal is simple and direct. Focus on that and we will be successful.

The complexity of the world is enormous. People of goodwill and intelligence, however, are able to deal with the complexity. For the rest of us, innovation and creativity will support the methods we have chosen by leaders to pursue.  We Americans invented our way to the moon and back safely. On schedule. It was possible and we did it. It didn’t seem that way at the outset, but it was and it was accomplished.

We can do the same with the four primary topics, above. Do this and the future is secure and exciting for us all. To shirk it out of fear is not an answer because the work has been left undone. Embrace the work and engage life. Please!

July 8, 2016